Virtual AWP Pedagogy is back with another great conversation, sponsored by Bloomsbury Publishing! AWP board member and creative writing professor DeMisty D. Bellinger moderates as authors and teachers Tara Campbell and Julie Iromuanya discuss the tools genre fiction provides to explore social problems and the lived experiences of writers of color. They examine redefining the canon and rediscovering existing BIPOC and women genre writers, and Tara and Julie offer book recommendations and champion the importance of reading and teaching what you love.

Books from this event can be purchased on the AWP Bookshop affiliate page.

The premiere of this Virtual AWP event will also include a live Q&A on YouTube on Thursday, January 13, 2022, at 6:00 p.m. ET. To receive a reminder and a direct link to this free event, as well as updates on future events, register online. Registration is free, and you do not have to be a member of AWP to do so. However, to participate in the live Q&A, you must be signed in on YouTube.

Participant Bios

Tara Campbell is a writer, teacher, Kimbilio Fellow, and fiction coeditor at Barrelhouse. She received her MFA from American University. Previous publication credits include SmokeLong Quarterly, Masters Review, Wigleaf, Jellyfish Review, Booth, Strange Horizons, and CRAFT Literary. She's the author of a novel, TreeVolution, and four collections: Circe's Bicycle, Midnight at the Organporium, Political AF: A Rage Collection, and Cabinet of Wrath: A Doll Collection. Connect with her at www.taracampbell.com or on Twitter: @TaraCampbellCom.

Julie Iromuanya is the author of Mr. and Mrs. Doctor (Coffee House Press), a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, the Etisalat Prize for Literature (now 9 Mobile Prize for Literature), and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize for Debut Fiction. Her scholarly-critical work has most recently appeared in Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism; Callaloo: A Journal of African American Arts and Letters; and Afropolitan Literature as World Literature (Bloomsbury Publishing). She was the inaugural Herbert W. Martin Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Dayton and teaches at the University of Chicago. She is at work on a second novel, A Season of Light. http://julieiromuanya.com

DeMisty D. Bellinger teaches creative writing at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts. She is an editor at Malarkey Books, the poetry editor at Porcupine Literary, and an alumna reader at Prairie Schooner. Her writing has appeared in many places, including Contrary Magazine, Okay Donkey, The Rumpus, and Best Small Fictions 2019. She is the author of the books Peculiar Heritage, Rubbing Elbows, and New to Liberty, forthcoming from Unnamed Press. DeMisty has an MFA from Southampton College and a PhD from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.